Ant Group upgrades AI health app AQ

Ant Group has launched major updates to its AI health app AQ, which now has a new Chinese name, “Ant A-Fu.”

The app, introduced in June 2025, has 15 million monthly active users and offers three main features: health Q&A, an AI health companion, and integrated health services.

Users can log and sync health data from major smart devices, upload images, create family health profiles, set goals, and receive personalized reminders in the app.

AQ’s upgraded Q&A can analyze images, simulate clinical consultations, and explain medical test results, but it does not provide medical diagnoses or replace professional care.

For medical consultations, AQ connects users to a network of 300,000 doctors, allows booking appointments, medication purchases, and payment using insurance certificates.

AQ partners with over 500 leading physicians, and its AI Doctor Agents have answered 27 million inquiries.

Ant Group is a global digital technology provider and operates Alipay, serving over 1 billion users across multiple sectors.

🔗 Source: Ant Group

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Ant A-Fu frames its AI as wellness guidance to avoid medical device rules

AQ (now Ant A-Fu) upgraded Q&A analyzes images and explains test results but says it does not provide medical diagnoses or replace professional care, which suggests it avoids oversight as a medical device by China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA).
NMPA rules (China’s drug and device regulator) require products with measuring functions or intended for treatment of diseases to be at least Class II devices that need approval 1, with Class II a moderate-risk category that usually needs pre-market review.
The service acts as a health companion that routes users to 300,000 doctors for consultations, so Ant A-Fu works as triage plus education rather than a diagnostic system, which reduces regulatory exposure while supporting payment with insurance certificates.

Device makers and health platforms can reach 15 million monthly users through Ant A-Fu’s data sync

Ant A-Fu can log and sync health data from major smart devices and create family health profiles, which implies integrations that give wearable makers and chronic disease device brands access to engaged users.
Third-party health app teams or medical device Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors can plug in Ant A-Fu’s AI consultation layer to lift retention on their own platforms.
Users have made 27 million AI Doctor Agent inquiries handled by its conversational AI assistants, which signals strong adoption of AI-guided services while offering a tested channel for device makers or telehealth providers to try remote monitoring devices or features with real behavioral data.